Dear Friends and Colleagues,



As the school year draws to a close, many of you are likely immersed in the fulsome rhythm of final celebrations, farewells, and end-of-year meetings. For those caring for the youngest children, your days may now gently shift toward the slower, sunlit rhythms of summer.

It has been a rich and meaningful year, and we hope the coming weeks offer you many moments of rest, renewal, and joy. We’ve put together a wonderful and thoughtful email with updates, news, and inspiration to keep you connected with WECAN's work.

Wishing you a nourishing and adventurous summer season!

Warmly, Heather Church on behalf of WECAN

STANDING BY OUR WORDS

Stephanie Hoelscher

The power of words. Public and private; shadow and light; sacred and profane. Words carry truths; they are impactful even when depleted of meaning. Words matter. What words can one stand by as stepping stones into clarity of thought, action, and purpose? What words does one stand by as gateways into a wider web of affirmations of what we do, why, and how? 

I share with you five good words, words that I turn to for help in the creation of images to guide children back into imagination, imitation, and play. They also keep me grounded to what is essential in a time of change. Lastly, these five good words prompt me to stay honest, authentic, and accessible in how I talk and write to others. Five good words that I hold in my pocket. 

“Home” The well-being of the warm animal protected in its nest is a sense of safe haven that we all share, adult or child. Home in this imagination is not a physical space but any inhabited space that bears the essence of “home” as an experience of closeness, of being present, authentic, and connected in the relationships we have with others. Home conjures up sacred hospitality. Home is serving the tea, watering the plants, laying a blanket on the grass for my parent-child class, the greeting at the gate upon arrival, and the escort upon departure. 

Click here for the full article.

FROM THE WECAN BOARD

Anjum Mir, Board Member

WECAN Board: Keelah Helwig, Susan Howard, Laura Mason, Gabriela Nuñez Plata, Anjum Mir, Heather Church and Ruth Ker

This coming year marks 100 years of Waldorf Early Childhood Education and our board is looking forward with great anticipation to marking this profound milestone. Planning for the year-long festivities and the April 2026 World Conference in Dornach is already underway at the International Association of Steiner/Waldorf Early Childhood Education (IASWECE) and our board is exploring ways, unique to our diverse continent, to unite us in celebration.

In preparation for the work ahead, our board studied The Essentials of Education, Lecture Two, by Rudolf Steiner. We have committed to continued study and to deepening our understanding of our curriculum’s pre-literacy work and the growing need to hone our work with neuroexpansiveness in the Early Childhood classroom.

Summer will be a time of growth and change for the WECAN Board as we support a transition in our association’s leadership. At our recent meeting in Spring Valley, we celebrated Susan Howard’s final board meeting as a Co-Director. She will continue to bring her wisdom to our work in North America as a board member and keep us connected to the work happening worldwide through her leadership role in IASWECE. 

We are grateful to welcome two new board members to our team to help carry the work: Meggan Gill and Amber Chavez.

Click here for the full article.

Meggan Gill

Amber Chavez

100 YEARS – PREPARING THE SOIL IN NORTH AMERICA: AN INVITATION

Heather Church, WECAN Co-Director

Philipp Reubke, co-leader of the Pedagogical Section and a member of the IASWECE Board and Council, shared in a recent article that children need the right conditions to thrive, just as flowers need good soil, sunlight, and water. In the early years, children don’t need to be “taught” in the usual sense, they learn naturally through play, imitation, and the loving presence of the adults around them.

This was the insight behind the word kindergarten, first used by Friedrich Froebel: a garden for children. Our task is to prepare the space, through our words, actions, and inner mood, so they can grow freely and in their own time.

The same is true for us. Inner growth doesn’t come from pressure or rules, but from deep inner will. Patience, gratitude, self-awareness, and love help us on this path.

As we prepare to celebrate 100 Years of Waldorf Kindergarten and Early Childhood, the IASWECE Council invites early childhood educators around the world into a shared practice of reflection. As part of this, we are encouraged to read Chapter V of Rudolf Steiner’s How to Know Higher Worlds, which describes the inner qualities that support true development.

Click here for the full article.

Thank you to everyone who has already donated to our WECAN Spring Appeal. If you have not done so yet, we would be grateful for any contribution you can make to support our work as an association.

Click here to read our Spring Appeal Letter.

FROM THE MEMBERSHIP OFFICE

Laura Mason, Membership Coordinator

As this school year comes to a close, we wish to thank all of our members and affiliates for the numerous ways you collaborate with your colleagues in WECAN - visiting one another for observation and mentoring, hosting and attending regional gatherings, traveling to in-person conferences, engaging in webinar events, attending trainings and workshops hosted by member institutes, carrying one another in your thoughts through hardship, donating to programs in need, writing and reading WECAN books and Gateways articles, etc. From a material perspective, your dues payments play a significant role in making it possible for WECAN as an association to support Waldorf Early Childhood education. Much more importantly, the spiritual activity generated by your interest in anthroposophy, young children, and one another is what truly makes our movement thrive!

The membership office has been very busy this year. We appreciate the work that programs put into drafting reports and hosting visits. While the task of self-study and peer review can seem daunting, the feedback we get from early childhood faculties is that they’re happy to be recognized for their work and gratified to have their strengths and challenges reflected back to them by our site visitors. 

Click here for full article.

Rainbow Gardens in Northfield, VT, WECAN Associate Member

REGIONAL REPRESENTATIVES

Laura Mason, Membership Coordinator

The WECAN Board has invited experienced Waldorf early childhood educators and caregivers in each region to act as WECAN regional representatives. Regional reps are our on-the-ground connection to the regions and their collaborative efforts strengthen the movement. In the coming school year, we expect to have 21 reps serving 15 regions and sub-regions. 

Two reps are stepping away from their roles this summer. Afra Zhang served the Pacific Northwest British Columbia region for the 2024-25 school year. Her support with membership processes in BC during this time has been much appreciated. Mary Maschal has served as the rep to the Mid-Atlantic region since 2016. Mary is very much in service of Waldorf education and her dedication to this role for so many years is evidence of that. We offer our deepest gratitude to both Afra and Mary for their work! 

We look forward to welcoming Ruth Ker as the new Pacific Northwest BC rep, and Melody Birdsong-Shubert and Rie Seo as co-reps in the Mid-Atlantic region in the coming school year. Please see the fall newsletter for more details about our incoming reps and a full description of the regional rep role. 

For a list of current reps, see the Contact Us Page of the WECAN website. Many thanks to all our regional reps for their work this school year. We are deeply grateful!

Afra Zhang

Mary Maschal

INCLUSION, DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND ACCESS UPDATE

Laura Mason, WECAN DEI Board Committee Member

We continue to fulfill our commitments to DEI through our support of members, our public resources, and our work as a board. In May, led by the committee, the board began a study of the book The Identity-Conscious Educator: Building Habits and Skills for a More Inclusive School by Liza A. Talusan. We’re finding it to be a resource that could be of great value to educators in the Waldorf movement and we encourage you to consider it as a study individually or with your colleagues.

We’ll be hosting an Alma Partners course designed for site visitors again this year. We also expect many regional reps, board members, and staff to attend, along with teacher trainers, and AWSNA support and accreditation team visitors. All WECAN site visitors will be expected to complete the course or demonstrate equivalency by the end of the next school year in the interest of ensuring that our site visits are objective, equitable, and supportive of the work our programs are being asked to take up. 

Alma Partners also hosted a pre-conference DEIJ event for attendees of our February Conference in Spring Valley earlier this year. It was well-attended and much appreciated by attendees, who had the opportunity to discuss the successes and challenges they had experienced in this work. Thank you to Alma Partners for indeed being soulful partners in our work!

Click here for the full article.

TEACHER EDUCATION

Ruth Ker, Teacher Education Coordinator

As many of our institutes prepare to greet their summer teacher training colleagues, they can reflect back on a year of growth and development and feel gratitude for the mutuality and consultations that happened during this past year’s regular monthly Zoom conversations with one another. The North American institutes (Canada, Mexico, and the US) are realizing that they have much to learn from each other.

The world also became more accessible when some representatives from North America were able to attend the International conference in Bratislava, Slovakia in early May. Here the topic of New Adult Learning was developed further. The 55 participants from countries all over the world worked together to delve into their individual questions. Using writing, clay, and pastels as well as small group sharings, institute leaders made progress on a soul level as well as with practical considerations. Many of our institutes are facing the question of “how do we educate our modern colleagues?” Worldwide, our EC institute leaders are reflecting on how the modern educator needs to be willing to develop relationships based on humility and interest in the other, while still developing within oneself. 

Congratulations to Sunbridge Institute, in New York State for the renewal of a WECAN Full membership.

Click here for the full article.

Sunbridge Instutute, Spring Valley, NY, WECAN Full Member

BIRTH TO THREE

Heather Church, Anjum Mir and Magdalena Toran, The Birth to Three Working Group

Reflections and Forward Steps: A Year of Growth for the Birth to Three Working Group

As we near the end of the school year, the Birth to Three Working Group is taking a moment to reflect on a year of activity, participation, and thoughtful questions for the future.

Since our fall meeting, we’ve hosted ten Parent and Caregiver Events. These included two special two-part sessions in collaboration with Alma Partners, three insightful gatherings with Dr. Adam Blanning, and several skill-building sessions led by Ruth Ker, Somer Serpe, and Lynn St. Pierre. To close out the year, Amber Chavez and Anjum Mir are offering sessions on creating your family culture and supporting gender-expansive families. We’ll return next year with new offerings that we hope will inspire and welcome you back. Your feedback has been truly heartening—thank you for your appreciation and enthusiasm for the resources and conversations these events have sparked.



Professional Development was more limited this year, with one session, led by Amber Chavez, who offered to support teachers in gender inclusion. This pilot effort raised important questions: Should we expand our professional offerings? Could we offer teachers much-needed professional development certificates? We have decided that indeed we will, and we are busy planning for the year ahead. Please let us know if you have suggestions for what might support your work with the children. (email hchurch@waldorfearlychildhood.org) Your insights will help guide how we continue to serve the growing and evolving needs of our community.

Click here for the full article.

Susquehanna Waldorf School, Marietta, PA, WECAN Full Member

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR THE FALL 2025 GATEWAYS ISSUE 89

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LITERACY

The Fall Gateways will focus on how we prepare the foundations of literacy with children and prepare them to

enter academic instruction in the grade school years. The booklet Speech Development in the Digital Age explains that this is not accomplished through screen exposure.

Rather, through live, human speech and encounters, the foundation for literacy is created. Articulate speech, as well as the ability to listen, and to understand non-verbal communication through movement and gesture, depend upon being with worthy human models in real time and real space. We teachers are the models. When we truly understand this phenomenon, we can help to evoke amazing developments within the child.

Speech is a movement process. As Rainer Patzlaff puts it in Speech Development in the Digital Age, 

“This movement process, which remains unconscious, takes hold of the listener’s muscles and limbs so that they join into the same movements. Literally, the whole person is listening. Even our larynx speaks and sings along constantly when someone is speaking or singing. . . And this is only the first stage of the listening process. In the next stage, this movement progresses from unconscious, purely muscular activity to the rhythmic system of heart and lungs. Storytellers can observe the effect it has in human listeners, where it manifests tension and relaxation and in the acceleration and deceleration of natural rhythms. These subtle nuances take hold of the soul and become vibrant experiences.”

What we bring through the word is powerful, indeed. For our Fall issue, Gateways invites observations and examples around the following themes, and any others that support the age-appropriate cultivation of literacy in early childhood.

Please bring your own questions as well.

• Where and when do we use speech to open the door to literacy?
• How do we see movement in the early years forming the basis for later academic learning?
• What are we doing that we can build upon further and extend to offer more enrichment?
• How can we understand and pass on to parents and colleagues the benefits of delaying formal literacy instruction during the early childhood years?

With your submission, please include a short bio of yourself, including the age group you work with, where you work, and anything else that is relevant to your submission (5-6 sentences).

PLEASE SEND SUBMISSIONS TO gatewayscollection@gmail.com BY AUGUST 10, 2025

WECAN CONFERENCES AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OFFERINGS

SAVE THE DATE!

Remember, Observe: Shape the Future - 100 Years of Waldorf Early Childhood in North America

2026 WECAN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATORS CONFERENCE - February 6-8, 2025

We think you’ll want to join us for this special event. We’ll look back at how we’ve been growing and developing over the past 100 years in North America and then begin to look toward what we will need to grow, imagine, and develop for the future, especially for the children coming to us today, entering this world.

We invite the pioneers in this work in North America to join us, as well as the many newer teachers who have recently entered the Waldorf Early Childhood movement. Together, we will journey from the beginning to the present and look ahead to finding ways to use creativity, spirit, and science, united with the wisdom of the past to shape how we will meet the children coming toward us in the next 100 years.

Wahsonti:io Hill, Otsistohkwi:yo Elliot, and Heather Church, along with several special guests, will introduce the Creative Spiritual Research process and share living examples of the power of working with spirit to develop new ways of working in our ever-changing world.

The CARE 1 Conference, The Arc of Becoming, will take place August 6–10 in Spring Valley, New York. This is the first time this Goetheanum-rooted gathering is being held outside of Switzerland. This pioneering event brings together educators, doctors, therapists, midwives, educators and caregivers to explore the profound question of what it means for children to enter the world today, especially in light of the growing therapeutic and developmental needs of young children.

This conference is inspired by the CARE 1 work of the Medical Section and will feature renowned speakers such as Dr. Karin Michael, Philipp Reubke, Debbie Laurin, Dr. Adam Blanning, and Dr. Johanna Huenig. 

With a focus on creating new, living connections between the fields of medicine, care of the young child, and midwifery, the conference invites deep collaboration, shared inquiry, and the renewal of care practices for our time. 

Register by July 1 and you will receive the early bird discount and access to a special live Zoom presentation with Dr. Adam Blanning.

Featuring keynote presentations from:

Dr. Adam Blanning, MD - Medical Section at the Goethanum

Johanna Hünig, Midwife MSc. - International Coordination of Anthroposophic Midwifery

Dr. Debbie Laurin, Ph.D. - Co-Director Early Childhood West Coast Institute of Anthroposophy - Pikler Pedagogue Candidate

Dr. Karin Michael, MD - Medical Section at the Goetheanum

Click here for more information.

CELEBRATING 100 YEARS OF WALDORF EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION

Click here for more information.

Please note the date and begin fundraising in your community so that every school or early childhood program can send at least one colleague to this once-in-a-lifetime celebration! 



WECAN PARENT AND CAREGIVER EVENTS

This past year, we hosted ten Events—nine Parent and Caregiver Events (two of which included practice sessions), and one Professional Development Event. It was a full and deeply rewarding process for all of us. Your kind feedback and ongoing support have been incredibly heartwarming to everyone involved in creating, presenting, and supporting these events. Thank you so much. Thank you to Dr. Adam Blanning for his continued support and Alma Partners for being open to collaboration.

Our final WECAN Parent/Caregiver event will occur on Wednesday, June 11th, 2025. Click here for more information. Reminder that this event is live-only and will not be recorded.



Plans are already underway for a new series of Parent and Caregiver Events and a more robust offering of Professional Development for teachers and caregivers. These will include certificates of participation for those who join, something many of you have requested—especially those working under state or provincial licensing requirements. We’re glad to support you in this way.

Next year, we will shift away from a donation-based model for Professional Development events toward registration through the bookstore with a set fee. As always, you are welcome to contact us with any questions or if financial support is needed.

And as always, we love hearing your reflections and ideas for topics or speakers.

FOR A FULL CALENDAR OF EVENTS VISIT OUR WEBSITE

WECAN BOOKS - NEW PUBLICATIONS

DONATE TO SUPPORT WECAN'S ACTIVITIES

Your contribution will help us support our members with additional resources, more ways to connect with colleagues, and inspiration for their ongoing professional development. Your support will also help us collaborate with other organizations to keep a light shining on the ever more critical and precious treasure of the first seven years and protect the young child’s joyful devotion to everyday life and unmitigated hope for the future.

We are grateful for any contribution you are able to make!

Interested in offering a legacy gift to WECAN through your estate planning? Contact us at info@waldorfearlychildhood.org.

JOIN WECAN BY BECOMING AN INDIVIDUAL MEMBER!

Membership benefits include:

• A subscription to the Gateways Journal (includes the Fall 2024 and Spring 2025 issues)
• WECAN News Updates
• A 10% discount on WECAN book sales
• Discounts on registration fees at WECAN conferences
• Regular email messages that include reports on activities, conferences, and events of both WECAN and IASWECE (the International Association of Waldorf/Steiner Waldorf Early Childhood Education).

Click here for more information.